Selectivity with bait - By Simon Crow

For what seems likes ages myself and my mates Steve Briggs and Rene Hawkins have been promising Austrian tackle shop owner Kurt Grabmayer that we would make a visit to his syndicate water close to Vienna. Set right in the middle of a forest, the superb venue boasts a tricky stock of carp ranging all the way up to almost 60lb, but due to work commitments it wasn’t until only recently that we had enough free time available to warrant a trip. With a journey of 18 hours ahead of me (15 for Steve and Rene), I wanted to ensure I had enough time at the lake to make it worthwhile, but in the end, work was so demanding for all of us that we could only manage six nights of actual angling. The trip, however, turned out to be a very memorable one all round, not just from the point of what we caught, but also because of the way the carp responded to the baits we used.

Steve was the first to arrive with his wife Joan, myself and Rene arriving a day later. Because Joan is also a carp angler, Steve settled into a swim which offered him the chance to double-up with Joan, leaving the rest of the lake free for myself and Rene when we arrived. Almost a week prior to our visit Bill Cottam and Kev Richardson had been at the water, landing quite a few fish to mid-40s, the majority of their captures being upper-20s. The weather was fairly cold for our week, but with autumn nearly over we all knew there was a good chance that the bigger fish in the lake would still be on the look out for food - too many times in the past have they fed much later into the year than the smaller fish. It’s as though the littler residents of lakes switch off a week or so earlier than the bigger fish. Why though, no-one actually knows, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the bigger fish need more food to get them through winter, and that perhaps they are the older fish and more tolerable of the colder water than the younger ones.

After a good scout around the lake, myself and Rene opted to fish two swims which were opposite to where Steve was. Steve and Joan had a fair amount of water stitched up with their six rods, but opposite there were still plenty of options available. We both liked the swims that were available, but couldn’t decide who would go where so in the end it came down to a simple toss of a coin to determine who would fish where. In the end I won, opting for the right hand side of two which offered me the chance to get a bait along a no fishing bank which had several nice weed beds and small fallen trees stretched along its length.

We knew from talking to Kurt that around 80% of the stock was commons with there being a sprinkling of mirrors. The bigger fish were the commons, with there being at least five of them weighing between 50-55lb and maybe only one or possibly two of the mirrors weighing more than fifty. Right at the beginning of the week Rene happened to mention that Solar’s Club Mix had been particularly good to him with big commons. He’s landed some lovely fish on the bait, as indeed have many of the other Solar users. It’s fair to say that Steve is a newcomer to the Solar range, but armed with the evidence that the lake contained more commons than mirrors, both he and Rene opted to use the Club Mix whilst I went in with BYT, a bait which has caught me carp from everywhere I’ve taken it since I started using it about four months ago.

At the end of the five day session, Rene had landed only commons to 30lb on the Club, whilst Steve and Joan had six fish (50/50 commons/mirrors) but two of them were the venue’s big commons at 55lb 10oz and 51½lb. Myself on the other hand landed eight fish in total, of which seven of them were mirrors to 50lb 10oz with only one common coming my way. My first fish was a 37½lb mirror and my second fish was a 33lb mirror. When I netted the second fish, Kurt turned to me and said: “You’re a lucky man catching two mirrors on the trot. For sure your next fish will be a common.” As it turned out, my next seven fish all turned out to be mirrors, the only common I caught was the last fish of the session coming on the final evening. Other members of the syndicate which fished the lake all commented on how strange my results had been, and it wasn’t as though the area I was fishing was somewhere that hadn’t been fished before or the methods I was using were new to the lake. Everything I did had been seen by the fish before, apart from the bait I used. BYT had not been tried on the venue up until my session so the only thing I can relate it to is that. I went in with 22mm boilies only and no pellets, particles or other baits in my swim. Merely the BYT only.

At the end of the week Rene said that he’d been speaking with Martin Locke about BYT only quite recently, and how it had produced a lot of big mirrors this season already, including the much sought after Black Mirror from an undisclosed UK mere in the south. Whether there is any coincidence in my result only time will tell, but certainly the fact that Steve and Joan both landed big commons on the Club Mix and Rene’s best fish was also a common, the session as a whole most definitely carved a solid impression in my mind when it comes to which bait to choose for a venue or when targeting a particular fish.

The ingredients
Talk amongst anglers about certain baits producing more bigger fish than others has been going on since before I was even born let alone a carp angler. You only have to look back at some of the early writings within the Carp Catchers Club to see for yourself: discussions about the pulling power of potatoes when compared to bread or whether each worked best when dipped or topped with additives. Even fifty years ago there was evidence that certain baits were better at pulling certain sized fish.

However, never has the evidence of selectivity with bait been so obvious than since the conception of Carp-Talk where it is possible to analyse catch reports week by week from around the world. Certainly nine or ten years ago the likes of Mainline with their Grange Mix and Nashbait with their Squid Liver Mix seemed to dominate the catch reports with a mass of awesome fish coming their way. All around the UK the biggest carp in the land fell for these baits, so much so that there were times when no carp were reported on other bait manufacturers products. Basically, there was something in these baits which big carp liked, and I remember several discussions in the likes of Carpworld amongst contributors, all trying to identify the key ingredients which worked in their favour.

In more recent years we’ve seen similar results with other baits like Trigga from Nutrabaits and of course the Club Mix. I remember Trigga turning the very tricky Cassien over down in the south of France, some of their field-testers absolutely blitzing the place with rakes of fish from a venue which has tested some of the best anglers in the world.

If you’d asked me the question fifteen years ago of whether I thought it was possible to be more selective with the bigger fish or a certain type simply by the bait product you used, I’d most definitely have been on the side of caution. Today though, I’m a firm believer that some fish get turned on by certain ingredients for definite. I can’t exactly say what the triggers are, but certainly there’s more to it than just the size of the baits being used or the methods incorporated by the anglers.

I’m not so sure it’s the simple case of the bigger a fish is, the more it develops a food preference for something, but I can most definitely get my head favouring it being related to how old a carp actually is. Maybe the older one gets the broader it’s acceptable food spectrum becomes, similar to the way it does with humans: give a group of small children a plate of hot curry and spices and the majority won’t eat it, but do the same to a group of adults and the majority will (note I say majority there, as there’s always going to be exceptions to the rule as this discussion wouldn’t be a discussion if the evidence was too obvious to prove otherwise). Maybe the taste receptors of the older carp get worn out as the years progress, meaning they get turned on more by stronger additives/ingredients. Certainly there’s evidence of their pharyngeal teeth wearing out where they have fed predominantly on hard shelled items like crayfish or snails: resulting in their food preferences changing at waters where they are the staple diet. Who knows?

Mirrors and commons
We could talk for ages and ages about this fascinating topic, each of us with our own examples to offer, but none of us with any real conclusive evidence as to why some baits work better with certain fish than others. I often wonder if it’s more to do with the genetics of the fish more than the ingredients themselves, perhaps the mutations like mirrors, linears and leathers having broader preferences to the likes of the common carp. Certainly if you ever hear talk amongst anglers about a particular venue having an uncaught monster within, it’s usually a common more than it is a mirror. Who’s to know if the commons prefer different foods to the others? Certainly during the session at the Austrian venue there are examples which get you thinking.

I’ve no doubt there are many other examples that others can use to relate to what I have mentioned above. I once recall Paul Bray telling me that using a small amount of coconut meal in your bait kept the tench at bay, leaving the carp to feed on the baits where the tench may otherwise prove nuisances. Bait and selectivity with captures is a fascinating topic of discussion, and certainly one which we could all talk about for hours and hours. Based on my experiences over the years, there’s definitely more to catching carp than just tying on a bait and casting out. Location plays the biggest role for sure, but behind that, bait is the most important part of the equation. You’re never going to completely eliminate the commons, mirrors, smaller fish, or whatever, because if it was that easy we’d all go out and catch what we wanted. Go with anything though and you may as well buy a lottery ticket as to what you catch, whereas a bit of research and thought behind your bait selection can certainly go in your favour. The evidence is just too strong to say otherwise.

Crowy